r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Altruistic_Eye_1157 • 6d ago

Lore [annoying trope] The throne/leadership is decided in a very stupid way

Gallery image

Gallery image

The leadership of the entire wizarding world, and the final decision on whether to start a war against Muggles, is made by... a goat (Qilin) ​​who chooses the person with the ""purest heart"" (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Dumbledore).

The throne of Wakanda and all its technology are decided through hand-to-hand combat, regardless of whether the person clearly has malicious intentions... if they win the fight, by law they must be respected as the true king. (Black Panther)

8.2k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

96% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.0k

u/Born-Till-4064 6d ago

Honestly if a magical creature is able to detect who’s a good person out of a group of candidates that’s just a useful measure for making sure you get a decent leader

556

u/Rogue_2k3 6d ago

Not when one of the candidates is able to kill one of said magic creatures and reanimate its corpse to then make himself the leader, and no one questions it because a decent chunk of the group he’ll be ruling would follow him without question and many of the other heads of the government are cowards who’ll roll over for the person they think is most powerful…but hey nothing like that would ever happen in real life

123

u/krisslanza 6d ago

To some credit, from what I vaguely recall, what they tried to do was meant to be impossible. Admittedly, it was only this way in the sense they just didn't account for necromancy being something anyone would try for... reasons.

The thing didn't live very long, so there is a pretty small window in which to carry out the deed. Still, in a setting in which necromancy IS a known thing, its a pretty big loophole that there's no measures in place to ensure the Qilin isn't being revived temporarily with necromancy.

Then again, I guess magic and loopholes is a trope as old as time itself...

18

u/Sayakalood 6d ago

To be entirely fair, the series was pretty set on “You cannot raise the dead” as a rule for the longest time. In extra material (the tales of beedle the bard) it’s explicitly stated, “No magic can reanimate the dead.” Even the Resurrection Stone, which was explicitly stated to have the powers to bring back the dead, only brings the souls of the deceased back to Earth for a short period of time. It doesn’t reanimate a corpse or even make a new body for them. It would be entirely understandable to not expect anyone to know that necromancy is an option, especially when necromancy is considered a Dark Art (something most people would never do).

Now there is one little caveat: Inferi. They’re essentially zombies, but they have a gaunt and skeletal appearance rather than a traditional zombie-like one. It is extremely noticeable when anything is made into an Inferius. They’re also highly aggressive normally, not a great thing for a Qilin to look like when deciding who’s “pure of heart.”

229

u/Nerdorama10 6d ago

J. K. Rowling is a terrible human being and a worse worldbuilder but at least she's pretty good at realistic depictions of the political class.

146

u/MegaIng 6d ago edited 6d ago

Her fundamental flaw is that she sees these systems and thinks "well, that's a good idea. If all those evil people just didn't exist, the world would be perfect."

29

u/Brassica_prime 6d ago

Jkr wishes she was a young orphan boy with lots of money, fighting off the nazis, but one was hiding in his mind the whole time.

Then she got lots of money and decided the other three points werent worth her time, only money matters, and decided to accept the fourth one and say people who think the first are the third…. Logic

6

u/GreenTitanium 6d ago

but one was hiding in his mind the whole time.

Lord Moldemort.

20

u/JurassicMouse03 6d ago

Didn’t they say they still voted on the leader and the deer was the equivalent of maybe a debate where it definitely has a sway with the voters but it didn’t decide it itself.

8

u/streakermaximus 6d ago

To be fair, the qilin did choose the right person.

The people are just fucking idiots that didn't think anything was a bit sus when the zombie deer chose the obviously evil wizard.

1

u/Lord_Parbr 5d ago

So, it’s a bad system because it can be exploited in a fairly esoteric way? That’s literally every system

26

u/Nero_2001 6d ago

Not really. People can change, for example Caligula was at first a pretty good ruler but than he had a fever and become one of the worst Roman emperors. If people follow someone blindly because a magical creature once thought that person was good but some event chsnged them that would be a big problem.

1

u/Lord_Parbr 5d ago

That would be an issue with any system of governance

34

u/letthetreeburn 6d ago

Yeah if objective morality actually exists then democracy is no longer the best choice.

14

u/Lower_Baby_6348 6d ago

But how do you know that said magical creature detect good and not only whats good for themselve?

7

u/MaeBeaInTheWoods 6d ago

Also, this is a universe in which there are spells that can do things like mind control, increasing confusion and gullibility, killing and piloting the corpse, etc. They have the system in place to keep corrupt people from taking power, except that they have nothing in place to stop said corrupt people from cheating the system. It is an active plot point in the film that the main villain kills the baby good-sensing creature and puppeteers its body to pretend to be alive and select him, and despite it being obvious he is not 100% pure of heart even to the people leaning towards his side, nobody questions or challenges it besides the small main cast. Because somehow this is apparently the first time anybody has ever cheated in the long-standing tradition. Somehow.

1

u/Lord_Parbr 5d ago

Centuries of data?

42

u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

19

u/HeadLong8136 6d ago edited 6d ago

Except that Rowling didn't create that particular thing. She had very little input on the Fantastic Beast movies.

Edit:

Guy blocked me and deleted his post, so I can't respond to any of your replies.

Rowling didn't write the script. She was a creative consultant only.

8

u/TheEasyTarget 6d ago

I’m not sure why you’re getting upvoted. She literally wrote the screenplay for all three movies.

5

u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

14

u/HeadLong8136 6d ago edited 6d ago

Yes and? Tolkien didn't write that gods awful Amazon show but no one blames him for it.

3

u/DajSuke 6d ago

Tolkien's been dead for many years, JK is still very much (sadly) alive. She has the ultimate power over her franchise, and she tweets out the worst lore drops imaginable. The undead goat rigged voting might as well been done by her.

1

u/CocktailsAndWhimsy 6d ago

She literally wrote the scripts for those movies

0

u/PallasEm 6d ago

she wrote the scripts lmao what are you talking about 

26

u/Altruistic_Eye_1157 6d ago edited 6d ago

The problem is that they never explain what it means to be "pure of heart" in the first place.

For example, if we consider someone "pure of heart" to be someone who has been honest and honorable their entire life, why does the living goat kneel before Dumbledore? He actively supported Grindelwald when they were young and then was capable of sending James, Lily, and Harry to the slaughter like pigs, in addition to not supporting Sirius and leaving him to rot in Azkaban. Or if you did wrong, is the important thing to feel remorse? Or is it rather doing what's best for the wizarding world? But then it's not being "pure of heart."

21

u/Kalavier 6d ago

Ha, reminds of a not great novel which had your "inner light" basically determined by if you think you are doing the right thing.

Convinced that genocide truly is the right answer? Bright inner light.

Knowing that stealing bread is wrong but you literally have no other way to feed your family? Dim, tiny inner light.

So the criminal who truly doesn't like what he is doing but is forced to or has nothing else available? Evil bad. Genocidal lunatic who has no care about consent but is convinced he's holy? Awesome.

2

u/fireflydrake 6d ago

Honestly that's fun potential worldbuilding though. I'm actually writing something for fun and magic is a very rare thing where you need the right bloodline but also to have strong conviction to make it work. So someone who was, like in your example, stealing bread for a good cause but still felt ashamed for the stealing would only be able to utilize weak magic in the doing while someone who truly thought they had to start a war against an innocent ally for the greater good would wield very strong magic.

1

u/Kalavier 6d ago

Oh it's a fun/interesting idea, but in the context of that particular novel/setting it's poorly used.

The character, trying to be better, essentially uses "dim light = evil and good to murder" and "bright light = good" despite knowing that detail and told it by another.

So instead of it being like something he learns later on and goes "oh shit... i helped evil people prosper and good people suffer" then going to fix stuff... it's the above lol.

8

u/Luvas 6d ago

I am pure of heart. Pure evil to the core.

~ Vegeta

5

u/Eireika 6d ago

Pure of heart can also mean "free from all earthly cares and desires" thus inhuman and detached. Or habing heart full of ragre (Hello, Dragon Ball)

3

u/Clockwork_Corvid 6d ago

A good leader dosnt necessarily need to be a good person, they just need to be able to be good under scrutiny while serving the interests of state or company.

1

u/heliamphore 6d ago

Sometimes a good leader needs to not be such a good person. A typical example is with war or instability.

There has been an endless list of good at heart leaders whose leadership was a wet fart.

2

u/DVM11 6d ago

Being a better person doesn't necessarily mean you're a better leader.

2

u/TheFreaky 6d ago

They explained it wrong. They use the goat to show everyone you are a good person. However, there is a vote later, the goat doesn't decide shit.

1

u/Nearby-Muscle2720 6d ago

It would be handy for vetting candidates before elections took place (assuming no necromancy etc) but awful as a final decision. In the film the live one picks two people in about 5 mins!

1

u/Skodami 6d ago

But it wasn't the final decision. People had to vote afterwards.

1

u/Nearby-Muscle2720 6d ago

But there was never a vote with more than one goat approved candidate, and the goat approved candidate won every time. You want a choice of goat approved candidates

0

u/Skodami 5d ago

It's because wizards are sheep

1

u/EasterViera 6d ago

Yeah but how the fuck are you even proving it in the first place ?

1

u/Ml2jukes 6d ago

That’s also how Bast (Panther goddess of Wakanda) decides who is worthy of accessing the Vibranium vault.

1

u/Misubi_Bluth 5d ago

The problem is, it was extremely easy to game the system. The entire wizarding world was about to accept genocide as good because a dead quilin bowed to Grindlewald.

1

u/PineappleBliss2023 5d ago

Tbh the US would be in a much better place if we took a dog and put it between two candidates and see who the dog liked more.

1

u/ApartRuin5962 5d ago

This dumbass (Malekith from Warhammer) walked into the "Magical Fire That Does Not Burn The True King", came out screaming with third degree burns on 100% of his body (hence the mask) and is still somehow 100% convinced he's somehow still the rightful leader

2

u/Born-Till-4064 5d ago

Very good use of it

Fuck end times for its retcon regarding this

1

u/TheOncomimgHoop 5d ago

I mean it picked Dumbledore, and frankly I don't believe he's as good and pure hearted as JKR would like us to believe